The object of the invention is a method and a device for feeding beads used in the filters of the tobacco industry products, particularly for cigarettes.
This invention concerns the feeding of spherical or oval objects which are subsequently placed into the filter material. For reasons of simplification, such objects will be hereinafter referred to as beads. Known products on the market are cigarettes the filters of which are provided with beads containing aromatic or flavour substances. The substances contained in the beads are released during smoking or yet before lighting up a cigarette by squeezing the filter resulting in crushing of the bead.
A difficult and very significant problem is the feeding of individual beads to a machine forming filters at great speeds in a way which guarantees that the beads remain undamaged and a high feeding efficiency is maintained, i.e. each manufactured filter actually contains a bead.
In known bead feeders, channels for feeding the beads to the area from which they are transferred to a bead delivery wheel are used, with the function of the said wheel to place the delivered beads into the filter material.
In the U.S. Pat. No. 7,975,877 B2 a bead feeder is disclosed in which the bead feeding unit is provided with a plurality of radially arranged channels connected with a bowl, where the channels rotate with the bowl, and the beads are picked up by vacuum transfer by a bead transfer wheel from pockets situated at the outlets of the channels, and then transferred to a bead delivery wheel. Feeding of the beads to the pockets at the ends of radially arranged channels is based on the centrifugal force and does not guarantee a high feeding efficiency.
The document WO 2009/071271 has disclosed a bead feeder in which the bead feeding unit is provided with passageways rotating with the bowl, where the beads are fed to a bead delivery wheel after separating the lowermost bead from those situated above it using a stationary arched wedge-ended element.
The document WO 2009/071272 has disclosed a similar bead feeder, where the beads are fed to a bead delivery wheel using two plates having a plurality of openings and rotating relative to each other, and a bead is fed after aligning respective openings directly on top of each other.
The U.S. Pat. No. 7,833,146 B2 shows a device for feeding beads by curved channels from a bowl directly to a bead delivery wheel, where the channels rotate with the bead bowl, and the beads are picked up from the bowl by vacuum transfer.